Can Dogs Keep Up With Human Cultural Whims and Stressors?

Source: Laura Stanley/Pexels.

It might seem dramatic to say that modern dogs are in crisis, but it’s important to ask if they and we are at a stage where the gap between the needs of dogs and the environments in which many people live is approaching a breaking point. Focussing on the canines, the question boils down to asking if they're able to evolve at a rate fast enough to keep pace with the changes and pressures of the modern world and human selective breeding.¹

Here, we're concerned mostly with dogs who live with humans in restricted environments, which includes our expectations of their adaptability and the concessions needed to live with humans with less space, fewer freedoms, more control over their lives, and the potential for a range of unmet needs. However, free-ranging dogs also are faced with constraints on their freedom. Could these restrictions along with others be reasons for a reported rise in negative incidents involving dogs?

In previous years, dogs might have been described as having a greater sense of freedom, a situation that they and we will be unlikely to see again. Although no one is suggesting that a return to dogs roaming the streets and producing unplanned litters of puppies is the way forward, there is no doubt that dog “ownership” appeared to have fewer demands or restrictions in the past.

Our modern world is changing rapidly. Many people struggle to cope with the ever-moving goalposts, the pressures we all face, and the often unrealistic expectations that contribute to heightened community-wide stress levels. According to a Mental Health Foundation and YouGov report, 74 percent of people feel so stressed they have been overwhelmed or unable to cope, and coping with change, whether good or bad, does not come without a price.

Dogs are social animals, can read and recognize our emotions, and can often be seen as providing much-needed emotional support to their families. But are we spending enough time considering their most basic needs? A change of focus is clearly needed, and a move away from buying things for dogs they may not want or need would be a start. Consumer spending on pets including dogs in the UK has increased from 3,524 million £ in 2005 to a staggering 9,662 million £ in 2021.² Are we focusing on possession-rich but emotionally poor relationships with our dogs? These topics have been explored by one of us (MB) in several publications, including Dogs Demystified: An A-to-Z Guide to All Things Canine.

As our lives change, so too do the lives of dogs and other animals. Biological evolution always is slower than cultural evolution, and even selective breeding by humans can't keep up with our cultural evolution and increasing stress.

Moving a step further and taking a deeper dive into dog-human relationships, A Dog's World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World Without Humans considered how dogs would fare if humans were no longer around. Because human/artificial selection moves faster than biological evolution/natural selection, making designer dogs and this or that hybrid or continuing on with breeds who can't breed or mate on their own or breathe defies natural selection. These dogs would never have evolved naturally and if they did, they would have died out if left on their own, as they will when humans aren't around.

Failure to adapt to modern environments has consequences for dogs. Lisa Hird notes, "Dogs who fail to adapt may be relinquished to rescue centres or worse, adding to the ever-increasing rescue crisis. In the UK alone, the RSPCA released new figures that show rehoming has dropped 8 percent while animal intake is up 8.4 percent year-on-year. Clearly, preventing guardian surrender of companion animals is a persistent challenge for animal shelters and rescue centres."

Dogs can help us connect eco-somatically with other animals and nature

For those of us working in the field of canine behaviour, we recognize the importance of looking back to see when and where our modern dogs evolved and how the domestication process started. However, it is time to look forward at ongoing evolution and consider the lives of each individual dog with whom we interact or live.

Marco Adda describes individual domestication as the shifts relating to the individual life of the dog and short-term domestication in the case of dogs affected by rapid transformations of societies and environments around them. He calls the changing relationships between dogs and humans "a reflection of our disconnection from nature. Our relationships with nature are made of somatic resonance; our bodily sensations and experiences are affected by nature." When this eco-somatic interchange we have with nature is discontinued and when we separate from nature, we disconnect from our feelings and our ability to be in tune with nature and resonate with the otherness of nature, being it mineral, vegetal, or animal, including other humans.

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As we become more stagnant, we need something to fill that void. We believe the role of numerous dogs in the last century is to fill the distance we put between us and otherness. This is also why dogs still represent a great opportunity to function as a gateway to nature. We're not referring to going outside to the park with the dog, but we mean the naturalness a dog can teach us, a naturalness we have mostly lost, which is a core reason for stress, anxiety, and many medical conditions of modern humanity. This isn’t happening everywhere, but it is in many places, and indeed in many dog-human homes. In that sense, education is vital, namely, helping people understand this opportunity dogs still represent for us, individually and collectively.

We need to listen more, we need to breathe deeply into our actions, we need silence, and we need less of everything else. Dogs can help us to remember to do these things if we allow them to lead us and to be. I echo this by thinking of dogs as a "gateway species" for connecting us with other non-humans and for bridging the empathy gap.

Living mutually respectful lives can help us all

Dogs are important for their ability to help humans connect and develop an understanding of many different nonhumans, and canine education needs to change focus from simple training activities to promoting a more comprehensive knowledge of dog behavior and how we might interact with them to support them in achieving rich and fulfilling lives.

Although many will never have the freedom that they once enjoyed, and while there are many benefits to our long-term alliance, we must not lose sight of the potential negative fallout that could affect dogs in our search for our perfect canine partner. This one-way relationship is sure to fail them and us. We should unleash dogs whenever possible and celebrate their joy and freedom.